Psychological Profiling of Students Ramps Up — And Parents Have No Idea

August 7, 2017

by Karen R. Effrem, MD

It is getting very hard to keep up with all of the ways social emotional learning (SEL) is infiltrating education in America and how the SEL data collection is expanding throughout all grade levels, frequently without parental consent. Here is a brief review:

A New Hampshire pediatrician wrote in The Wall Street Journal about how teachers are now performing mental health screening on their students without parental consent or even knowledge. This was also extensively analyzed by Anne Marie Banfield of Cornerstone Action.

SEL is inextricably linked to the Common Core standards as admitted by large national organizations like the U.S. Department of Education, the American School Counselors Association, and the National Association of State Boards of Education.

States are trying to expand SEL programs and assessments in their state plans mandated by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

The U.S. House is starting to resurrect the effort to pass the Strengthening Education Through Research Act (SETRA) that included federally mandated social emotional research — a bill that failed after major grassroots parent opposition in the last session of Congress.

Proponents are trying to tell us that there is a lot of research to lend support to these efforts:

“… Providing training for early childhood education teachers, embedding direct instruction and practice of targeted skills into daily practice and engaging families in these efforts help to boost the success of these kinds of interventions, Oregon State University researchers suggest in a new paper.”

“And so it [Longmire and Associates consulting firm] developed psychographic questions meant to reveal the influence of students’ personalities and attitudes. An analysis of tens of thousands of responses led to distinct profiles (“skeptical introvert,” “analytical perfectionist”) that Longmire includes in workshops for colleges, and that they, in turn, could use to craft personalized communications.”

“About three dozen 18- and 19-year-olds were fitted with an electroencephalograph, or EEG, cap, which measures the brain’s electrical activity. The brave subjects were then shown various statements about the benefits of a liberal-arts education. Loaded with electrodes, the cap registered immediate brain activity in response to specific parts of each statement. The goal was to measure the subjects’ emotional responses, ‘memory activation,’ and intensity of attention.” Here is the device that the researchers used:

There are, of course many problems with these types of efforts, experiments and research. The experts continue to disagree on the definition of SEL, which makes it hard to measure. For example, the authors of a major journal volume in “The Future of Children” by the Brookings Institution said:

To create SEL standards and assess progress toward those standards presupposes that we agree about what SEL is. Yet neither researchers nor practitioners nor policymakers have come to such a consensus.

Closely related to that is the near universal admission by SEL researchers that there are no or very few good SEL assessments. Here are some examples:

We have few usable, feasible, and scalable tools to assess children’s SEL. (Brookings, p. 157)

“The measurements that psychologists like me have are so awful! I mean they are fakeable, imprecise, they have a thousand biases.” (“Grit Guru” Angela Duckworth at ExcelinEd.org [Jeb Bush] conference at 35.45)

The third broken link in the SEL credibility chain is that these same experts also admit that their studies are not that great, or even if there are positive results, they admit they do not know what elements of SEL produced those results. The Oregon researcher said:

“We know these skills are essential for children, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about ways to enhance them,” said Megan McClelland, the Katherine E. Smith Healthy Children and Families Professor in Human Development and Family Sciences in OSU’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences. “The results to date have been mixed. We don’t yet know what the ‘key ingredients’ are here. [Emphasis added]

This obviously makes it very hard to believe what these people are saying, especially when there are profit motives for corporations or testing companies like the ACT group discussed above.

It is also disturbing that overburdened teachers are forced to become psychologists and gather this sensitive data on your children, especially without parental knowledge or consent. There is already a history of erroneous diagnoses and forced medication related to this.

And what about the whole issue data privacy that can affect your child’s future college attendance, employment or military service? Although the experiments described above on high school students were voluntary, imagine what would happen if that kind of data were added by the Commissioner of Education Statistics to the types of data collected under the proposed College Transparency Act that lifts the prohibition on collection of longitudinal data on students after college and into the workforce. Because this is happening under the auspices of education, and not in medical settings, personally identifiable data can and will be shared with third parties without consent.

Parents across the nation banded together to stop SETRA. We must continue this vigilance to protect the hearts, minds, privacy and futures of our children. In addition, we must proactively protect privacy at the state and federal levels. Stay tuned for ways you can help.

3 comments on “Psychological Profiling of Students Ramps Up — And Parents Have No Idea”

With all this frenzy about stopping bullying, seems that this is another way they can bully kids. They will get pigeon holed into being a “type” of kid, could be used to create a sort of “caste” system (like this is the best type to be, and the second best, etc. It doesn’t seem immune to judgments).

I saw something where the person doing the PARCC testing charges $40/child and made $8 billion the first year. I wonder who will profit from this financially?

I also think some testing will be used to determine which children have more progressive tendencies and conservative tendencies. That is already being done with CCC: I saw one test question that was proposed, not sure if used, was “do you think America was right to drop the bomb on Hiroshima” – this after showing horrific pictures from the incident. Not telling the kids that America dropped written warnings from planes for 2 weeks prior to dropping the bomb telling people to leave the area. So if a kid answers “yes”, they would know that the kid was getting other information that what was being fed/programmed to them. This would be a child to watch in the future as a potential conservative. Perhaps denying him college entrance (why educate the enemy). I think it’s all very dangerous and needs to end.

You mention that the person who developed the infographic did not know the difference between 5 or 6 but if you check the graphic only 5 human characteristics are identified. There is one characteristic that is identified twice and that is concientiousness, so there
are only 5 human characteristics in the graphic so the number 5 is correct!

This is true because each meeting I have at my sons high school they’re trying to coerse me into having him apply for OPWDD. The problem is my son is not disabled. They also want me to sign him up for Medicaid not because hes sick but because they explain he could get an SSI check that can go in his bank account. Instead of building him up they’re labeling him as incapacitated to learn even though he passed 2 NYS Regents. Yes…we have to protect our children from being institutionalized because thats where they are headed; to break our children down to nothing which is constitutionally against the law!